After Dark
by Fell The Tempest
Summary: Once a hero, now a mercenary working only for himself. Fox McCloud has fallen a long way. Or, has he? What if he's discovered something important, something that could change the fate of the galaxy? Starfox/Riddick Crossover. First on FanFiction.


It was dark. Cold.

Endless.

It was the emptiness of space. It stretches for millions of miles, too far to see with the human eye. Occasionally, a planet or two floated innocently, in colors of vibrant reds or soft blues. All around, stars glistened, blinking on and off, as though talking. As though they were sending an unbelievable message to an unknown place.

Telling a story. A story that would last through the ages, slinking behind every corner and passed on from generation to generation. A story of a terrible evil soon approaching, the horrid deaths of millions, and... the cunning of a dark knight.

The story of Riddick McCloud.

_**After Dark** by Dotkaite_

**(REMOTE CAMERA ACCESS, MODEL P-280 PASSENGER SHIP, "Hunta Gratstna", 4:21 CORNERIAN MILITARY TIME)**

He hung in the darkness, suspended by chains inside his prison cell in the engine room of the P-280, a shuttle designed for civilian transport. It was a rusty red color, dully illuminated by the nearby sun's rays. Made of a slightly bulky AA-Titanium, it was perfect for keeping space debris out... but also good for keeping people in.

He quickly mulled over his situation, trying to think of a way to escape before they docked. He could barely make a move - his arms were locked behind his back and he was blindfolded. You might ask yourself - why was he so heavily secured?

You see, he was a mercenary - but not just any mercenary. He was one of the most skilled fighters in the universe... cold, calculating, and above all, merciless. At one point, he had worked for the good of a planet named Corneria, but things didn't worked out as planned. He thought that he was acting of his own free will - but after the mysterious disappearance of General Pepper and the end of the Aparoid Wars, a disturbing truth came to light.

He wasn't fighting for his home. He was fighting for his enemy.

But, enough about that - he had to get out of his cell.

_'I wonder...'_ he thought, as he struggled lightly to escape his bonds._ 'They say that most of your brain shuts down in cryo-sleep. That the only side left, is the primitive side... the animal side.'_

He turned his head, left and right, cracking his neck._ 'Why... am I still awake?'_

After relaxing, he used his enhanced senses to learn more about his environment. One thing that his captor didn't take into account: He already had enhanced senses. When you cut a person off from a sense for a period of time, the others become enhanced to compensate.

_'...I'm being transported with civilians...'_ he thought. Even though he couldn't see them, he just knew... he knew they were there. He could hear them. Voices could be really helpful in most situations. _'Maybe forty, forty plus.'_

He mulled over the voices he had heard so far. _'A strange eastern voice... maybe some Fachina holy man. Smells like rabbit. Probably on his way to New Mekka - after all, it's the only spiritual planet left... but what route? What route?'_

He grunted underneath his gag, trying to use his free fingers to reach the knife compartments at his wrists. Sadly, a no-go.

He picked up the scent of a woman, too. A bird, maybe a falcon or robin? Her perfume was throwing his sense of smell off. He smelled her perfume, boots, and her tool belt. She also had a leather jacket... maybe a prospector or miner.

Right next to her, was... a mercenary? Blaster residue, had a slight dirty air about him. _'Knowing his type, he'd stick to back routes only...'_

And then came his real problem. _'Leon... a blue-eyed devil. Chameleon. Plans on taking me back to prison. Only this time, he took a civilian ship... which means he's trying to take me back without getting much attention. Ghosting me to hell.'_

He gave a slight, muffled sigh, then relaxed in his temporary prison._ 'It's a long trip ahead...' _he thought, as a small clang echoed throughout the ship. _'A long time for something to go wrong.'_ He thought, eerily.

Suddenly, many more clangs echoed around the ship. What looked like bullets went shooting through the inside of the ship, punching holes in the ship's walls and causing the air to start escaping.

The pilot lay in her pod, suspended in cryo-sleep, when suddenly an loud alarm went off on the computer screen in front of her. Red lights were flashing throughout the bridge, and a message appeared on every uncompromised computer screen. It read, "EMERGENCY. P-280 EXTERIOR HULL BREACH. LOCATION - NAV. BAY CENTER. ATMOSPHERE COMPROMISED. INITIATING CRYO-STASIS CANCEL..."

Slowly, the pilot opened her eyes and took a breath. The screen in front of her changed views to a chart showing the life signs of all the passengers on board - the majority of them were stable, the occasional that was slightly higher than normal. Her eyes half-lidded, she almost didn't comprehend the words on the screen.

It was to be expected. After all, they were just awakening from a long sleep.

"40 CRYO LOCKERS INTACT AND OPERATIONAL. WAKING CAPTAIN, NAV. OFFICER AND DOCKING PILOT."

Suddenly, more of the bullets flew into the Cryo-statis area. It was basically a single, steel-made hall, with vertical pods of sleeping passengers lining the walls. Stray bullets severed wires and punched through fuel lines, causing a lot of mass damage around the ship. The majority hit the sleeping captain's cryo-pod, easily puncturing through the solidified meta-plastic covering. Stray bullets severed wires and punched through fuel lines, causing a lot of mass damage around the ship. The screen in the pilot's pod flashed red with warning signs.

"WARNING: CAPTAIN VITALS: FLAT-LINE."

Reading the alert, she quickly shook the sleep from her veins and as she was thrown into the hallway - courtesy of the standard wake-up program for most Cryo-sleep units. She landed awkwardly on her side, then started rolling. 'The ship must be entering a planet's gravity,' she thought. The turbulence was getting tough to handle. Before she could stand, another body fell on hers - it was the Nav. Officer, Ferret Owens.

"Finch... Why... did I fall on you?," he asked, confused. He was still half-asleep. He shifted, getting off of her as fast as he could while still keeping his balance. He sat back on his rear, giving her time to sit up as well.

"The... captain's dead," she panted. The Cryo-sleep's effects hadn't worn off yet. "I was looking right at him."

Ferret grabbed his watch and pressed some buttons on it, trying to fight through he panic he was feeling. "Uh, urgh, The chronos shows that we're twenty-two weeks out, s-so gravity wasn't supposed to kick in for another nineteen, WHY'D I FALL AT ALL!?" By now, he was nearly yelling, the situation was so chaotic.

By now, she had managed to scramble to her knees. "Did you hear what I said!? The captain's dead."

They both looked over at the captain's nearby pod - which was now riddled with bullet holes. His body lay limply against the glass, bloodstains covering most of the view. Not that it helped the scene.

They turned their heads as another sound met their ears. It was the sound of metal pinging on metal at a high speed.

Quickly, Finch ran into the main cockpit of the ship and activated the on-board piloting system. She pulled a couple of levers, then said... "Fifteen, in fifty milli-bars, we're dropping to twenty MB per minute..." She struggled with the system until another tremor shook the ship.

Another console gave the dreaded, and now familiar EMERGENCY blare. "Shit!" She yelled. "We're bleeding air. Something took a swipe at us." She fumbled with a few levers as she tried to stop their impending destruction.

Ferret stood nearby, watching her anxiously. "Come on, come on!" He zipped up his brown camouflage fighter jacket, fiddling nervously with the zipper. "Just tell me we're still in the shipping lane, then. Just show me all those stars."

He glanced at a nearby screen, then tapped a blue button. "Come on, you big, bright, son of a..." he trailed off as he looked out a nearby window.

Attention drawn, Finch looked over at him anxiously. "What?" She followed his line of view and saw it.

A giant, reddish-brown planet. It looked like it was an infinite desert, and it was approaching fast. The distance meter on the targeting system was showing it getting closer at almost 100k miles a second! Its gravity was pulling them in...

The two pilots locked eyes, giving each other a look they thought they'd never see in a situation like this.

Determination.

**(CUT SCENE PROGRAM INITIATED.)**

The ship roared into the planet's atmosphere, cutting through it like a knife through butter. Rather, a flaming knife through butter. Small parts of the fuselage were breaking off, spinning into the depths of space, while others fell to the planet's surface.

Ferret sat down at their radio communications station and put on a headset. He picked up a small microphone, and started a standard distress call. "This is an emergency dispatch from Merchant Vessel Hunta Gratstna, en route to the Tangea system with forty commercial passengers on board..."

As if on cue, at the exact moment Ferret sat down, Finch ran out of the room, her feet quickly 'thunk'ing on the steel plate flooring. She reached a door marked "Manual Piloting Mechanism.' She quickly opened it and hurried inside.

She sat down in a large, padded chair, and strapped herself in, almost missing a few times. With shaking hands, she opened up the blast shield that was covering the window.

Suddenly, flames exploded before her vision, heating up the cockpit. Luckily, they were outside the window, so she wasn't in the middle of a blazing inferno right now.

She almost lost herself to fear, but then shook her head to clear her mind. This was no time for spacing out! She had a whole ship of passengers to save!

Another SMASH echoed throughout the ship, and Ferret's distress call stopped. For a moment, Finch was worried, but then she heard a familiar voice through her wireless earpiece.

"Finch, where the hell's our comm?"

She steeled herself again and let her chair slide back, putting her within reach of some auxiliary controls. She tapped a few of the blinking switches, in a seemingly random order, and pulled a lever.

A backup 'brake' had been deployed. Four steel flaps opened up at the rear of the ship, slowing their descent. Finch quickly took a deep breath, praying for the best.

As irony would have it, one of the flaps broke off, the odd position of the rest sending the ship into a destructive spiral, heading for the ground with no way to stop!

It spun, down, down, down... cutting through the atmosphere and leaving a trail of smoke in its wake. A masculine on-board computer voice yelled "RATE OF DESCENT BEYOND KNOWN LIMITS. RATE OF DESCENT BEYOND KNOWN LIMITS." Its efforts had gone to waste, however, as neither pilot paid it any attention.

"We've got to aim for a trench, Finch, right?" Ferret tapped a few buttons on his end, pulling up a display of the ground below.

Finch was too busy to hear him. She was doing whatever she could to stop their deaths from happening. She reached into a side compartment and pulled two more levers - one marked BACKUP AIR BRAKES and one marked G- DIFFUSED SYSTEM ACTIVATION.

The ship slowly stopped spinning, leaving them falling straight down. They had a lot more control over the ship now - leaving a chance they could make it out alive.

She pulled a final switch marked GRAVITY CENTER. Only problem was, when she tried to move it, it jammed halfway into position. That same computer voice appeared once more, this time yelling, "CENTER OF GRAVITY, TOO FAR. RECOMMEND PURGING OUTER SHELLS."

So that's what Finch did. She typed a series of commands into a small terminal, causing the back fourth of the ship to disconnect, plummeting into the planet's surface.

Feeling the sudden drop in descent, Ferret nearly jumped out of his seat. "What the f... was that a purge, Finch!?"

"We're too heavy in the ass!" She yelled, her voice crackling over their two-way headset link."I can't get the fing nose down!"

Another section disconnected, falling behind them in their fast descent. Many digital voices railed over the onboard computer, each giving different warnings and pointing out failures in the ship's systems. Over the commotion, she just barely managed to make out Ferret's voice.

Ferret sat at his station, reading off their falling information. His hands flashed from keyboard to keyboard, running diagnostics and in-depth scans. "Rate of descent, 5000mph beyond safety limit. 220 Meters over the planet's surface... Arsium, Ginderite deposits..."

The blast doors behind him closed.

Confused, he tapped into his radio. "Finch, what the hell are you doing?"

"...I'm gonna jet all of them out." She said lowly. After hearing nothing but silence on the radio, she continued. "Look, I've tried everything else. I've still got nothing left to try."

Ferret sat in stunned silence. Then he almost yelled at her, scaring her as well as himself. "Well, you've got to try everything twice! Think about our cargo! There are people on this ship, Finch! There's no way we're going to just flush out the--" but stopped when she cut him off.

"If you know something I don't, then get up here and take the chair over!" She yelled, hands on the switch that would save them, but kill all the passengers. Over forty people. They would die at her hands. But, at the moment, she couldn't bring herself to care. It was a matter of survival, and she'd be damned if she didn't walk out of it alive.

"Look, the company says we're responsible for every single one of those people, Finch!" He exclaimed angrily. He couldn't believe she would do something like this! What happened to the good-natured, honest Finch? The one he'd known for the past year? He sighed bitterly. '_I guess it's true... what they say about people. You see their real emotions right before they're about to die.'_

"What, are we going to die out of sheer fing NOBILITY!?" She snapped back, ready to save herself and her friend, whether he liked it or not.

It was all he could take. She was losing it! "Don't you touch that handle, FINCH!" He yelled, unstrapping his safety harness and beating on the blast doors, hoping to stop her before it was too late.

Realizing that he was out of his seat, her hand left the switch. If he wasn't in his seat, he'd be killed for sure if she purged the ship. She initial shockwave from the disconnection would send him flying around the bridge, probably sending him through a window or beating him to death.

Ferret stood outside the door to the MPM room, valiantly trying to throw open the door. It was solid steel, but that didn't matter to him. He was ripping at it with his bare hands, trying to stop his co-pilot from killing all of their passengers. He had managed to pry one of the hinges off the door. "FINCH! KNOCK IT OFF!"

She yelled back, "NO! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE... AND FOR THIS!?"

She pulled the lever to purge.

**(CHAPTER CLOSING INITIATED.)**

Well, this is a Star Fox/Riddick Crossover.

It's taking me a bit longer to write this story than The Departed, because I'm watching the movie simultaneously on my computer while typing. I want to end every chapter with a cliffhanger, as well as to stick as close as I can to the script of The Chronicles of Riddick.

I know it may seem like it's the same story with name changes, but trust me... it'll get a lot different soon.

As for character behavior. Fox is going to be darker in this fic. He has a backstory for this behavior - which will be revealed in later chapters. I'm not giving the whole plot away yet.

I will tell you that many other characters will be involved. Two will be his allies, One his enemy, and One... will be a psychopathic murderer. (You'll never guess who!)

I'm working on the next chapter as you read this. Please R&R!


End file.
